John Camden Hotten

“ Patter flash, to speak the language of thieves, talk cant.
PATTERERS, men who cry last dying speeches, &c., in the streets, and those who help off their wares by long harangues in the public thoroughfares. These men, to use their own term “are the haristocracy of the street sellers,” and despise the costermongers for their ignorance, boasting that they live by their intellect. The public, they say, do not expect to receive from them an equivalent for their money—they pay to hear them talk.—Mayhew. ”

“ This is the true HANDICAP. The application of the term to horse-racing has arisen from one or more persons being chosen to make the award between persons, who put down equal sums of money, on entering horses unequal in power and speed for the same race. So that the HANDICAP has ultimately come to be regarded as an arrangement of a purely business-like nature, by which means affairs, no matter how much they may differ in degree, may be arranged satisfactorily by all parties. The use of the word is spreading rapidly, and it has already a sense beyond that of mere sporting. ”

“ At present, the publicans only have signs, and they and their customers can much better appreciate “the glorious pomp and pageantry of war,” than a parliamentary debate. A victory, with so many of the enemy killed and wounded, and so many colours and stands of arms captured, awakens much more thrilling emotions in their breasts than the most useful invention, or the most glorious work of art.
The sea being our proper element, admirals have always had the lion’s share of the popular admiration, and their fame appears more firmly rooted than that of generals. ”

“ A Belgravian gentleman who had lost his watch or his pocket-handkerchief, would scarcely remark to his mamma that it had been BONED—yet BONE, in old times, meant to steal amongst high and low. And a young lady living in the precincts of dingy, but aristocratic May-Fair, although enraptured with a Jenny Lind or a Ristori, would hardly think of turning back in the box to inform papa that she, Ristori or Lind, “made no BONES of it”—yet the phrase was most respectable and well-to-do, before it met with a change of circumstances. ”

“ The White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, now a tame omnibus office, was for more than a century one of the bustling coaching inns for the West. “Some persons think the sublimest object in nature is a ship launched on the bosom of the ocean; but give me, for my private satisfaction, the mail coaches that pour down Piccadilly of an evening, tear up the pavement, and devour the way before them to the Land’s-End.”—Hazlitt. ”

“ The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the great public schools, are the hotbeds of fashionable Slang. Growing boys and high-spirited young fellows detest restraint of all kinds, and prefer making a dash at life in a Slang phraseology of their own to all the set forms and syntactical rules of Alma Mater. Many of the most expressive words in a common chit-chat, or free-and-easy conversation, are old university vulgarisms. ”

“ There yet remain several distinct divisions of Slang to be examined;—the Slang of the stable, or jockey Slang; the Slang of the prize ring; the Slang of servitude, or flunkeydom; vulgar, or street Slang; the Slang of softened oaths; and the Slang of intoxication. I shall only examine the last two. If society, as has been remarked, is a sham, from the vulgar foundation of commonalty to the crowning summit of royalty, especially do we perceive the justness of the remark in the Slang makeshifts for oaths, and sham exclamations for passion and temper. ”

“ I am aware that the indelicacy and extreme vulgarity of the work renders it a disgrace to its compiler, still we must admit that it is by far the most important work which has ever appeared on street or popular language; indeed, from its pages every succeeding work has, up to the present time, drawn its contents. The great fault of Grose’s book consists in the author not contenting himself with Slang and Cant terms, but the inserting of every “smutty” and offensive word that could be raked out of the gutters of the streets. ”

“ His name is preserved as the sign of an alehouse in Mariner Street, London.
Though the fame of generals seems to be more short-lived than that of admirals, yet a few ancient heroes still remain. Amongst these, General Elliott, or Lord Heathfield, the defender of Gibraltar, seems to be one of the greatest favourites; perhaps his popularity in London was not a little increased by the present which he made to Astley, of his charger named Gibraltar; who, performing every evening in the ring, and shining forth in the circus bills, would certainly act as an excellent puff for the general’s glory. ”

“ The coster has, of course, his own idea of the proper way of spelling words, and is not to be convinced but by an overwhelming show of learning,—and frequently not then, for he is a very headstrong fellow. By the time a coster has spelt an ordinary word of two or three syllables in the proper way, and then spelt it backwards, it has become a tangled knot that no etymologist could unravel. ”

“ THE RHYMING SLANG.
There exists in London a singular tribe of men, known amongst the “fraternity of vagabonds” as chaunters and patterers. Both classes are great talkers. The first sing or chaunt through the public thoroughfares ballads—political and humorous—carols, dying speeches, and the various other kinds of gallows and street literature. The second deliver street orations on grease-removing compounds, plating powders, high-polishing blacking, and the thousand-and-one wonderful penny-worths that are retailed to gaping mobs from a London kerb-stone. ”

“ Gull, a dupe, or a fool, is often used by our old dramatists, and is generally believed to have given rise to the verb; but a curious little edition of Bamfylde Moore Carew, published in 1827, says that TO GULL, or GULLY, is derived from the well known Gulliver, the hero of the famous Travels. How crammed with Slang are the dramatic works of the last century! The writers of the comedies and farces in those days must have lived in the streets, and written their plays in the public-houses, so filled are they with vulgarisms and unauthorised words. ”

“ The Bell, in Warwick Lane, Newgate Street, is another example of the old London coaching inns, still in its original condition, the galleries being propped up to prevent their falling down: everything about the place has a seventeenth century look,—the country carts, the chickens here in the very heart of the city, the inn kitchen with its old black clock, its settles and white benches, [479] the very smell of the cookery going on seems more homely and old English than the hot greasy vapours emanating from the areas of modern taverns. ”

“ A person is said to be FLASH when he apes the appearance or manners of his betters, or when he is trying to be superior to his friends and relations. Flash also means “fast,” roguish, and sometimes infers counterfeit or deceptive,—and this, perhaps, is its general signification. “Flash, my young friend, or slang, as others call it, is the classical language of the Holy Land; in other words, St. Giles’ Greek.”—Tom and Jerry, by Moncreiff. Vulgar language was first termed FLASH in the year 1718, by Hitchin, author of “The Regulator of Thieves, &c., with account of FLASH words.” ”

“ Mungarly casa, a baker’s shop; evidently a corruption of a Lingua Franca phrase for an eating-house. The well-known “Nix Mangiare” stairs at Malta derive their name from the endless beggars who lie there and shout, “Nix mangiare,” i.e., “Nothing to eat,” to excite the compassion of the English who land there,—an expression which exhibits remarkably the mongrel composition of the Lingua Franca, MANGIARE being Italian, and Nix (German, NICHTS) , an evident importation from Trieste, or other Austrian seaport. ”

“ We can picture to ourselves the unfortunate plumed, feathered, silken gallant of the period walking, in his low shoes and silk stockings, through the ill-paved dirty streets, on a stormy November day, when the honours were equally divided between fog, sleet, snow, and rain, (and no umbrellas, be it remembered,) with flower-pots blown from the penthouses, spouts sending down shower-baths from almost every house, and the streaming signs swinging overhead on their rusty, creaking hinges. ”

“ It is singular that what Punch says, unwittingly and in humour, respecting the Slang expression, BOSH, should be quite true. Bosh, remarks Punch, after speaking of it as belonging to the stock of words pilfered from the Turks, “is one whose innate force and beauty the slangographer is reluctantly compelled to admit. It is the only word which seems a proper appellation for a great deal which we are obliged to hear and to read every day of our life.” ”

“ Greek, framed in accordance with the rules which govern the construction of the language, are not Slang, but are good English, if not Saxon,—a term, by the way, which is as much misused as any unfortunate word that can be remembered just now. Sound contributes many Slang words—a source that etymologists frequently overlook. Nothing pleases an ignorant person so much as a high-sounding term, “full of fury.” ”

“ What can be more inconsistent than to see a bawd at the sign of the Angel, or a tailor at the Lion? A cook should not live at the Boot, nor a shoemaker at the Roasted Pig; and yet, for want of this regulation, I have seen a Goat set up before the door of a perfumer, and the French King’s Head at a sword-cutler’s.
“An ingenious foreigner observes that several of those gentlemen who value themselves upon their families, and overlook such as are bred to trades, bear the tools of their forefathers in their coats of arms. ”

“ Mayhew, too, in his interesting work, London Labour and London Poor, admits that many Cant and Slang phrases are merely old English terms, which have become obsolete through the caprices of fashion. And the reader who looks into the Dictionary of the vagabonds’ lingo, will see at a glance that these gentlemen were quite correct, and that we are compelled to acknowledge the singular truth that a great many old words, once respectable, and in the mouths of kings and fine ladies, are now only so many signals for shrugs and shudders amongst exceedingly polite people. ”

“ I will not weary you by further examples, with which most of you are better acquainted than I am myself, but merely express my satisfaction that there should exist bodies of men who will bring the well-considered and understood wants of science before the public and the Government, who will even hand round the begging-box, and expose themselves to refusals and rebuffs, to which all beggars are liable, with the certainty besides of being considered great BORES. Please to recollect that this species of BORE is a most useful animal, well adapted for the ends for which nature intended him. ”

“ Beware of false friends, for they will turn to be your foes, and inveigle you into houses where you may lose your money and get no redress. Keep from thieves of every denomination. And now, my good son, I wish you a safe journey through Highgate and this life. I charge you, my good son, that if you know any in this company who have not taken the oath you must cause them to take it, or make each of them forfeit a bottle of wine, for if you fail to do so you will forfeit a bottle of wine yourself. ”

“ Look at those simple and useful verbs, do, cut, go, and take, and see how they are hampered and overloaded, and then let us ask ourselves how it is that a French or German gentleman, be he ever so well educated, is continually blundering and floundering amongst our little words when trying to make himself understood in an ordinary conversation. ”

“ GLOSSARY OF THE BACK SLANG.
Birk, a “crib,”—a house.
Cool, to look.
Cool him, look at him. A phrase frequently used when one costermonger warns another of the approach of a policeman, or when any person worthy of notice passes by. When any old lady has been bargaining with a costermonger, and leaves his barrow without purchasing, the proprietor of the barrow will call out to the rest, “COOL the delo nammow,” which, though it means literally nothing beyond “Look at the old woman,” conveys to them an intimation that she is, from their point of view, a nuisance, and should be treated as such. ”

“ The Golden Ball continued as a silk-mercer’s sign until the end of the last century, when it gradually fell to the Berlin wool shops, and with them it continues at the present day.
Balls of various colours were invariably the signs of quacks and fortune-tellers in the eighteenth century; the Bagford Bills are full of Red, Blue, Black, White, and Green Balls, all signs of those gentry who profess to cure all the evils flesh is heir to. ”

“ The universality of Slang is extraordinary. Let any person for a short time narrowly examine the conversation of their dearest and nearest friends, aye, censor-like, even slice and analyse their own supposed correct talk, and they shall be amazed at the numerous unauthorised, and what we can only call vulgar, words they continually employ. ”

“ Yet, ludicrously enough, immediately the fashionable magnates of England seize on any French idiom, the French themselves not only universally abandon it to us, but positively repudiate it altogether from their idiomatic vocabulary. If you were to tell a well-bred Frenchman that such and such an aristocratic marriage was on the tapis, he would stare with astonishment, and look down on the carpet in the startled endeavour to find a marriage in so unusual a place. ”